But she didn’t. Instead, she stood there in a slack fighting stance, staring at him and trying to read his mind. “Come on. Just throw a few punches,” he said.
Miri sighed and threw a few punches, but she didn’t need a mirror to know that unlike Rafa, her moves were lackluster, possessing little, if any, oomph.
“Your technique is good, but you really need to make sure youpack”—he exaggerated as he demonstrated again—“the punch.”
“I feel silly punching the air.”
“Then, here,” he said, moving in front of her and putting up his hands. “Aim here.”
Miri let up her stance. “You want me to punch you?”
“My hands, yes.”
“Full force? What if I hurt you?”
“You’re not going to hurt me,” he said with a bit too much of a snicker for Miri’s liking.
She narrowed her eyes at him—Is that so?—then got back into fighting stance and threw a punch, connecting with his palm.
“Good. That’s better,” he said. “Just make sure you follow through. Don’t stop just because your fist connected with your target.”
Her mouth pulled in a tight line as she sent another throw his way. This one stung a bit more. Maybe shewasgetting the hang of it.
“Great. Now feel free to go a little harder. Don’t worry about hurting me,” he said.
Her eyes looked as if a fire had just been set behind them as she swung her arm again, growling, “I’ll show you, Ninja Turtle,” before her fist could connect with his.
But he grabbed her fist and brought their hands together between them, stopping her momentum like a needle scratching a record player.
“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” he asked.
“What’s going on? I can barely even look at you right now!”
Rafa raised his brow. “Because I’m wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt?”
Her mouth twisted, fighting to hold back the words on the tip of her tongue, before she blurted out, “Yes, actually. I mean,look at you, wearing that teeny tiny T-shirt, which leaves absolutelynothingto the imagination,” she said, casting her eyes down almost as if talking to herself. “It’s downright ridiculous, yet it’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, so it’s kind of hard having you stand in front of me right now, forcing me to stare at all the ways that shirt should be R-rated,especiallyafter I kissed you andespeciallywhen you’ve so easily moved past it. So, yeah, what’s going on is that I feel silly. Silly while you’re so clearly indifferent about what happened. And so while you’re ready to move on like it never happened, I’m over here wishing I could rewind ten minutes and do everything differently.”
He smiled, brushing the pad of his thumb over her knuckles. “Pringles? I liked it.”
Her head ticked up. “Wait…what?”
“The kiss.”
“You did? Like it, I mean?” she asked.
Rafa smiled.
“Of course I liked it. I like just about everything about you.” She bit her bottom lip. The lip that she wanted nothing more than to be all over Rafa’s. “And when we’re alone,” he said, pulling her closer by a fraction of an inch, “I’m going to kiss you again. But for now, we have an audience.” Miri glanced over her shoulder as he motioned with his head toward Felix and Logan. “But at least this way, it looks like nothing more than me trying to teach you to fight.”
“So is this lesson just a ploy to touch me?”
His gaze homed in on her. “Maybe. And possibly also to distract myself so I’m not just thinking about kissing you for the next who knows how long.”
“And are you? Focused, I mean,” Miri asked as her eyes stayed on him.
His gaze went straight to her lips. Oh, he was focused, all right. But…he was right. Kissing would have to wait.
“Yes. And if you really want to be a kickass jungle warrior, then I needyouto focus on learning these moves.”
